Advertising helps fund Big Issue’s mission to end poverty
SPECIAL PRICE: Just £9.99 for your next 8 magazines
Subscribe today
Social Justice

End two-child limit on benefits to lift 600,000 kids out of poverty, Labour told: 'We're in a crisis'

Some 4.3 million children in the UK are now living in poverty. How can the government tackle this shameful figure?

Image of child eating/ child poverty uk

Millions of children are living in poverty in the UK. Image: Unsplash

A narrow focus on “getting parents working” will lift just 150,000 children out of poverty by the end of the decade, new research warns – a fraction of the 4.3 million young people who live below the breadline. 

Prime minister Keir Starmer and work and pensions secretary Liz Kendall have promised to help end poverty by getting Brits off benefits and into work.

Yet new research from Action for Children warns that a narrow focus on boosting parental employment  ‘will barely shift the dial’ on child destitution.

Employment support initiatives alone would lift just 150,000 impoverished children out of poverty, the charity found. Ending the two-child benefit limit, by contrast, would help 600,000.

“This research makes clear that a Child Poverty Strategy which focuses on boosting parents’ income through employment will barely shift the dial,” chief executive at Action for Children, Paul Carberry, promised 

“If the government wants to keep its promise to significantly reduce child poverty and keep it down in the long term, this means scrapping the caps, boosting benefits and building more social homes too.”

Advertising helps fund Big Issue’s mission to end poverty
Advertising helps fund Big Issue’s mission to end poverty

The issue could not be more urgent. Earlier this week, A survey of frontline workers revealed that more than 85,000 UK children are living in destitution – the most extreme form of poverty.

“In the 43 years I have worked in this service, I have never experienced the level of child poverty we are seeing today in one of the so-called richest countries in the world,” one frontline worker said. “And for some children and young people, they can see no way out of this trap.”

How can the government tackle child poverty?

Action for Children costed different combinations of measures the government’s Child Poverty Strategy – due to report in the summer – could include to achieve the government’s ambitions. 

They found scrapping the two-child limit and benefit cap to be the single most cost-effective policy option the government could implement, lifting 600,000 children out of poverty by 2030 at a cost of £3.9bn per year. 

The two-child limit, however, is not enough by itself. If this was the only significant spending commitment in the strategy, more than a quarter (26%) of children would still be living in poverty by 2035.

To tackle this number, the government would have to increase universal credit above the rate of inflation – something they have indicated they will do, but not without various countervailing cuts to other benefits. This policy would reduce child poverty by 28% (1.2m) and cost £10.4bn a year by 2030.

Implementing all the measures in the model – including investment in employment support programmes, a real living wage, building 90,000 social homes a year and reforming child maintenance – would cut the child rate by half to 15% by 2045, returning it to levels not seen since the 1970s when fewer than one in five children were in poverty 

Fixing poverty won’t be cheap, stressed Carberry. But it will save money in the long term. 

“In the current fiscal climate, there’s no doubt this will require difficult choices – but poverty has a price too,” he said “This is a once in a generation opportunity to invest in our children – not only transforming lives but delivering massive economic benefits. Failing to do so will condemn more children to a life of poverty.”

If the government reduces the child poverty rate by 28% (1.2 million) by 2030, the policy costs of keeping it at that level for those children would be £80bn over their lifetime, but the benefits to society would be worth at least £164 billion through reduced public service demand, higher tax revenues and lower welfare spending.

Of course, it isn’t just an economic imperative – it’s a moral one. 

Jasmine from Dorset has four children aged nine, seven, five and two. She has been struggling to make ends meet since separating from her children’s father, particularly as the two-child limit denies support to her two youngest children.

“I’m noticing that I’m trying to make money stretch further and it’s just not stretching,” she said. “So it could make a huge difference, just having a little more money to account for. I have four children, I don’t get any money for two of them. It’s not that I necessarily expect it – I do not. But would it help? Yes, let’s be honest, we’re in a crisis.”

Do you have a story to tell or opinions to share about this? Get in touch and tell us moreBig Issue exists to give homeless and marginalised people the opportunity to earn an income. To support our work buy a copy of the magazine or get the app from the App Store or Google Play.

Advertising helps fund Big Issue’s mission to end poverty

READER-SUPPORTED SINCE 1991

Reader-supported journalism that doesn’t just report problems, it helps solve them.

Recommended for you

View all
Disabled man may be forced to close his business after DWP slashed his Access to Work support
Access to work

Disabled man may be forced to close his business after DWP slashed his Access to Work support

The DWP is implicated in the deaths of hundreds of disabled people. Here's how to overhaul it
New work and pensions secretary Pat McFadden in the House of Commons
Benefits

The DWP is implicated in the deaths of hundreds of disabled people. Here's how to overhaul it

Here's when people will get their benefits from the DWP over Christmas in 2025
dwp benefits christmas/ bauble
Christmas

Here's when people will get their benefits from the DWP over Christmas in 2025

Kinship carers are sleeping on sofas and floors to keep children out of care, study finds
A person sleeping on a sofa wrapped in a duvet
Care system

Kinship carers are sleeping on sofas and floors to keep children out of care, study finds

Reader-supported journalism that doesn’t just report problems, it helps solve them.

Every day, Big Issue digs deeper – speaking up for those society overlooks. Will you help us keep doing this work?